The Mediveal English Royal Courts: The Problem of Their Origins

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Notes

1. Doris M. Stenton (ed.) The Earliest Lincolnshire Assize Rolls, A.D. 1202–1209 [Lincoln Record Society, XXll] (Lincoln, 1926); The Earliest Northamptonshire Assize Rolls, A.D. 1202 and 1203 [Northampton Record Society, V] (Northampton, 1930); Rolls of the Justices in Eyre for Lincolnshire (12181–19) and Worcestershire (1221) [Selden Society, LIII] (London, 1934); Rolls of the Justices in Eyre for Yorkshire in 3 Henry III [Selden Society, LVI] (London, 1937); Rolls of the Justices in Eyre for Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire, 1221, 1222 [Selden Society, LIX] (London, 1940); Pleas before the King or his Justices, 1198–1202 [Selden Society, LXVII‐LXVIIl] (London, 1948–49).

2. G. O. Sayles, Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench under Edward I [Selden Society, LV] (London, 1936); Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench under Edward III [Selden Society, LXXIV] (London, 1955); and with H. G. Richardson, Select Cases of Procedure without Writ under Henry III [Selden Society, LX] (London, 1941).

3. H. G. Richardson, Memoranda Roll, 1 John [Pipe Roll Society, new series] (London, 1943): Memoranda Roll, 10 John [Pipe Roll Society, new series] (London, 1955). Richardson and Sayles have recently incorporated their findings in a book, The Governance of Mediaeval England (Edinburgh, 1963).

4. F. M. Stenton, Anglo‐Saxon, England, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1947), 640–42; for other references to early judicial commissions see F. Pollack and F. W. Maitland. The History of English Law, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1898). I, 102, n. 2.

5. The references to itincrant justices in the pipe roll of 1130 discussed in Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 175–82. Chroniclers found only the more grisly aspects of the justices' work worthy of mention: typical of chronicle references is the mention of Ralf Basset's hanging of forty‐four thieves at one session in 1124, Cecily Clark (ed.), The Peterborough Chronicle (Oxford, 1958), 46.

6. William Stubbs, Constitutional History of England (Oxford, 1874–78), I, 478.

7. Pollock and Maitland, English Law, I, 142.

8. Stubbs, Constitutional History, I, 478.

9. Pollock and Maitland, English Law, I, 142.

10. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 173.

11. Ibid., 196–97.

12. Stubbs, Constitutional History, I, 507–9.

13. J. E. A. Jolliffe, The Constitutional History of Medieval England, 3d ed. (London, 1954), 212; Pollock and Maitland, English Law, I, 156, support this view.

14. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 198–99.

15. H. G. Richardson, “Richard fitz Neal and the Dialogus de Scaccario,” English Historical Review, XLIII (1928), 161–71.

16. Richard fitz Neal, Dialogus de Scaccario, ed. Charles Johnson [Nelson's Medieval Classics] (London, 1950), 77.

17. William Stubbs (ed.) Select Charters, 8th ed. (Oxford, 1905) 258–63.

18. Pollock and Maitland, English Law, I, 156

19. Henry de Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinis Angliae, ed. G. E. Woodbine (New Haven, 1915—), II, 301, f 105b.

20. Stenton, Lincoln Record Society, XXII, xxxviii.

21. Pollock and Maitland, English Law, I, 108.

22. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici Secundi, ed. William Stubbs [Rolls Series] (London, 1867), I, 207.

23. Stubbs, Constitutional History, I, 525.

24. Pollock and Maitland, English Law, I, 153–55.

25. G. B. Adams, Council and Courts in Anglo‐Norman England [Yale Historical Studies, V] (New Haven, 1926), 217–19, 240–42; Jolliffe, Constitutional History, 215–16; Bryce Lyon, A Constitutional and Legal History of Medieval England (New York, 1960), 282; R. C. Van Caenegem (ed.) Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanville [Selden Society, LXXVII] (London, 1958), 30.

26. Sayles, Selden Society, LXXIV, xxvii. His view has been endorsed by S. B. Chrimes, Introduction to the Administrative History of Medieval England, revised ed. (Oxford, 1958), 49, n. I; and A. L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1955), 413.

27. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 210–11.

28. T. F. Tout, Collected Papers (Manchester, 1932), I. 193.

29. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 210.

30. Ranulf de Glanville, Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus regni Angliae, ed. G. E. Woodbine (New Haven, 1932), 183–84.

31. Richardson, Memoranda Roll, 1 John, xiii, xiv.

32. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 210.

33. Ibid., 168–69.

34. J. E. A. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship (London, 1955), 57–58, 296–97. See also Richardson's review of Jolliffe's book, English Historical Review, LXXI (1956), 447–69.

35. Jolliffe, Angevin Kingship, 58.

36. The early Curia Regis Rolls reveal numerous instances where the justices consulted the king, both Richard I and John. E.g., F. W. Maitland (ed.), Three Rolls of the King's Court‐Richard I [Pipe Rolls Society] (London, 1981), 8–9, 18; C. T. Flower (ed.), Curia Regis Rolls (London, 1922—), I, 176, 207–8, 245, 464–65; IV, 42–43; VI, 54, 163.

37. Van Caenegem, Selden Society, LXXVII, 31, cites an entry in Pipe Roll 34 Henry II, 155, where it is recorded that an individual owed one fine for having his plea in curia regis, and that he owed a second fine for having another plea in curia regis ad scaccarium. He also cites passages from the Dialogus, 32, 34, in which the author makes a distinction between the king's court and the exchequer.

38. See references to banco in Curia Regis Rolls, III, 274; V, 119; VI, 66; VII, 113; refernces to barones de scaccario, VII, 33; VIII, 87, 309, 316.

39. Curia Regis Rolls, I, 57, 123, 181, 408.

40. Curia Regis Rolls, VIII, 87, 316; X, 122, 142, 155.

41. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 213–14.

42. Purchases of this privilege are recorded under King John: Doris M. Stenton (ed.), Pipe Roll, 2 John [Pipe Roll Society, new series] (London, 1934), 47, abbot of St. Albans; 99, William de Wrotecham; 109; abbot of Whitby; 147, prior and monks of Norwich; 207, of St. Swithins; 239, prior of Lancaster.

43. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 172.

44. Pollock and Maitland, English Law, I, 170; see also Sayles, Selden Society, LV, xxii; Powicke, English Historical Review, XXXIX (1924), 267, in a review of Curia Regis Rolls, I: and Stenton, Selden Society, LXVII, 86.

45. Stenton, Selden Society, LXVII, 61; the text of the roll is printed on 296–320, Feb.‐April 1200. Lady Stenton notes that possible a roll of proceedings before King John was begun on his visit to England in 1199, but if so, it has not survived.

46. Doris M. Stenton, “King John and the Courts of Justice,” Proceedings of the British Academy, XLIV (1958), 113–14.

47. Curia Regis Rolls, V. preface. The roll consists of three small membranes, one for each of the terms of Michaelmas 1208 (pp. 316–19), Hilary 1209 (pp. 321–24), and Easter 1209 (pp. 325–28). The records of the Hilary and Easter terms consist almost entirely of postponements.

48. Curia Regis Rolls, V. 327.

49. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 384.

50. Stenton, Proceedings of the British Academy, 112, 118.

51. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 385.

52. Sidney Painter, The Reign of King John (Baltimore, 1949), 242.

53. Curia Regis Rolls, VII, 113. The editor's note describes this roll (Trinity term 1214) as “a record of proceedings before the justices of the Bench.” See also Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 385–86, especially note 1, p. 386.

54. Richardson and Sayles, Governance, 386, n. 1, cite letters close and patent to the justices of the bench as late as April and July, 1215.

55. F. M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward (Oxford, 1947), I, 40; e.g., Curia Regis Rolls, VIII, 85–86; XI, 40–41.

56. Powicke, Henry III, 44.

57. E.g., Curia Regis Rolls, XIII, 64, 87, 534–35, 583.

58. F. W. Maitland (ed.), Bracton's Note Book (Londong, 1887), I, introduction, 58; Sayles, Selden Society, LXXIV, xxix‐xxxi. Earlier, in Selden Society, LV, xxxv, Sayles stated that the court coram rege might data from 1224; however, now he rejects that opinion.

59. Chrimes, Administrative History, 86–87; Powicke, Henry III, I, chap. iii “Reform at the Exchequer,” 84–122, and 329.

60. Sayles, Selden Society, LV, xxxiii‐xxxiv; Powicke, Henry III, I, 38–40.

61. Chrimes, Administrative History, 98–101.

62. Adams, Council and Courts, 232.

63. T. F. Tout, Collected Papers, I, 192.

64. E.g., Bracton's Note Book, II, 292, a judgment before “the lord king at Westminster in the presence of the justiciar, the earl marshal, and other great men”; II, 564; III, 242–43, 280–83.

65. Adams, Council and Courts, 247.

66. Ibid., 228–30.

67. Stenton, Lincoln Record Society, XXII, xxxvii.

68. Curia Regis Rolls, III, 27–28; similarly, V, 268.

69. T. Duffus Hardy (ed.), Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum (London, 1833), I, 383b.

70. The memoranda roll from the Yorkshire eyre of 1218–19 has survived (Selden Society, LVI, 390–428, discussed by Lady Stenton in the introduction, xxvi‐xxxix).

71. James F. Baldwin, The King's Council in England during the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1913), 40; to some extent also the view of C. T. Flower, Introduction to the Curia Regis Rolls [Selden Society, LXII] (London, 1944), 25.

72. Sayles, Selden Society, LV, xxxviii; and Selden Society, LXXIV, xxxi‐xxxii.

73. Sayles, Selden Society, LXXIV, xxxii, xxxvi.

74. Doris M. Stenton (ed.), Pipe Roll, 6 John [Pipe Roll Society, new series] (London, 1940), Michaelmas 1204, xi‐xx. Most of the cases are found in Curia Regis Rolls, III, pleas coram rege, Easter term, 1204.

75. Stenton, Proceedings of the British Academy, 109–10.

76. Flower, Selden Society, LXII, 480.

77. Adams, Council and Courts, 232–33, n. 41. The pleas examined are found in Bracton's Note Book, III, 123–52.

78. Sayles, Selden Society, LXXIV, xxxii‐xxxiii.

79. Ibid., xxxiv.

80. The first oblation recorded in published financial records for having an assize transferred to Henry III's court coram rege dates from 1236, C. Roberts (ed.), Excerpta e Rotulis Finium (London, 1835–36), 310.